Fundamental

Famed electronic duo eases gracefully into middle age on this mature, mannered record.

Sometime in the late 1970s, rock music officially reached adulthood. The fans who grew up on rock as a wild, youthful counter-culture were getting older; they had careers, kids, fancy stereo equipment, and whole new sets of concerns. The same went for the stars themselves: Suddenly it was natural for them to look like adults, wear tapered suits, and act like they probably knew a lot about wine and real estate. Think of Rod Stewart, Dire Straits, Mick Jagger at Studio 54, and all those California guys who grew beards and indulged in self-employed guitar-strumming on self-owned houseboats. The British dreamed of an adult high life and the Americans dreamed of white-collar vacations, and they began to make music about those dreams.

By the time Pet Shop Boys came along, pop was fairly adult, and they certainly sold adult-like pop: reserved and witty, even arch. Funny thing about them, though: They're one of the first acts I can think of to have navigated their own career-long growing-up with a form of electronic music. It's been fascinating to watch an act like this become elder statesmen of the British charts, and to bend synthesized dance-pop around the kind of music elder statesmen make-- music that's more careful, eloquent, and subtle, music that's wiser and less demonstrative. Rock guys, after all, usually turn to acoustic guitars and "roots" to pull this off, and plenty of non-rock acts (hello, Madonna) can never quite do it gracefully. But Pet Shop Boys have the qualities to make it possible: Pop music that always came from clever heads, a style that was always a bit distanced, and a sound-- Neil Tennant's clear, airy voice; Chris Lowe's lovable building-block electronics-- that makes them wonderfully, even comfortingly familiar. We don't so much need newness and excitement from them; they can just drop in for a little chat, and we'll be glad to see them, and there'll always be some witty thing they pull that's a true surprise.

Fundamental, as cleverly titled as any of the eight albums that preceded it, should be a prime moment for this duo, and it is without question a grand improvement from their most recent work. Their electro-disco is back in fashion, which lets them return to, umm, fundamentals: Working again with 1980s star producer Trevor Horn, they make tracks like "Integral" pop with a grandiose synth drama half-worthy of Frankie Goes to Hollywood. (Singles and companion discs also get packed with remixes by new-breed electro-disco stars, like Richard X and Michael Mayer.) They're lyrically energized, too, albeit against a nuts-and-bolts target: Much of the album revolves around Tennant's disillusionment with the New Labour government he once supported, particularly Tony Blair's close relationship with George W. Bush (whom some might describe as being a sort of, umm, fundamentalist). In other words, "I'm With Stupid" is about exactly what you'd think it would be; "Indefinite Leave to Remain" is about UK immigration reform; "Integral" kind of goes wide-angle on immigration and security both, with a sarcastic chorus ("If you've done nothing wrong, you have nothing to fear") that's nowhere near as great as Tennant speaking coyly after it ("Sterile! Immaculate! Rational!").

There is terrific work here: "Minimal" does a detour into old-school synth-pop, and "Twentieth Century" and "The Sodom and Gomorrah Show" add so much harmony and shine that they can't help growing on you. (The latter is nearly a new "Suburbia.") The best moments seem to come from slowed-down crooners, these moments where we can luxuriate in the fineness and familiarity of Tennant's voice. "I Made My Excuses and Left" is lovely on this front, and "Casanova in Hell" is even better-- if our pop stars were all young, there's just about no chance we'd get to hear piano ballads imagining Casanova as an impotent saddo who wrote seduction memoirs to create his own sexual myth.

The question, then: How come the record as a whole just doesn't stick? Much of it seems strangely blank, neither great nor at all sub-par. "Indefinite Leave to Remain" just floats along sounding well-meaning, the Diane Warren ballad "Numb" flails hopelessly, and "Luna Park" is a boring assault on an America of spectacle and cheap thrills that sounds like a bad Cliff's Notes to de Toqueville. There's hardly a thing wrong with it, but who ever likes something just for that? Even the ambition of the lyrics seems somehow ordinary-- exactly the way you'd expect an act like this to write songs about politics.

But this is what you get when they stop by for tea now: Enjoying even the best parts requires a certain faith in this group, the same kind of fondness that keeps you happy to hear an old friend's stories a few more times. It's to this duo's great credit that they've earned exactly that-- our attention in letting these songs grow on us.